- This event has passed.
Artist Talk: Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker
February 12, 2025 | 12:00 pm–1:00 pm
This program is online via Zoom.
FREE
Registration recommended.
Artist collaborators Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker join José Roca, Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator-at-Large of Latin American and Diasporic Art at the Hirshhorn Museum, for a virtual conversation exploring the artists’ often humorous yet powerful video works that turn a critical eye toward social, cultural, and political topics.
Conlon and Harker have worked together since 2006. They create playful video artworks that address important environmental and sociopolitical issues, especially in Panama, where they live and work. Their 2013 work Tropical Zincphony recently entered the Hirshhorn’s collection. The video plays with a typical scenario in Panama—a mango falling on a corrugated zinc roof—to explore the roles of unpredictability and improvisation in life in the tropics.
SCHEDULE
11:50 am EST | Zoom broadcast opens
Noon EST | Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker in conversation with José Roca
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Donna Conlon was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1966. After receiving an MA in biology from the University of Kansas in 1991, she studied art, earning in 2002 an MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. She moved to Panama in 1994, where she has since lived and worked. Jonathan Harker was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1975. He holds a degree in film and media studies from the University of Florida. He moved to Panama in 1986, where he, too, lives and works.
Both artists have developed solo careers as well as their fruitful collaboration. Since 2006, they have jointly created more than a dozen works, mainly in the short-video format, using humor and satire, as well as striking graphics, as powerful tools to address complex issues such as colonialism, national identity, gentrification, pollution, and consumerism.
ABOUT JOSÉ ROCA
José Roca (b. Barranquilla, 1962) is the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator-at-Large of Latin American and Diasporic Art at the Hirshhorn Museum. He was artistic director of rīvus, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, Australia, in 2022. From 2012 to 2022, he managed FLORA ars+natura, an independent space for contemporary art in Bogotá. He was the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at Tate, London (2012–2015), and curator of the LARA collection, Singapore (2012–2020). He managed the arts program at the Banco de la República in Bogotá (1994–2008) and was co-curator of the Poly/graphic Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2004), the 27th Bienal Internacional de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil (2006), and the Encuentro Internacional de Arte de Medellín MDE07 (2007). He was the artistic director of Philagrafika 2010 in Philadelphia and the head curator of the 8 Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011). He is the coauthor of Transpolitical: Art in Colombia, 1992–2012 (with Sylvia Suárez); Waterweavers: A Chronicle of Rivers (with Alejandro Martín), published by the Bard Graduate Center in New York in conjunction with the exhibition Waterweavers: The River in Contemporary Colombian Visual and Material Culture (2014); and rīvus: A Glossary of Water (with Juan Francisco Salazar), published as a companion to the 23rd Biennale of Sydney. He is the coeditor of Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection (with [NAME] Publications).
Roca served on the awards jury for the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007) and the Prince Claus Awards Committee (2012–2016). He was the Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program (2001–2002) and the Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2002–2003). He received the CIFO Curatorial Achievement Award in 2012 and the Montblanc de la Culture Prize in 2017. Roca lives in Bogotá.
ASL translation will be provided on Zoom, and CART (real-time captioning) will be provided across all platforms. If you have any questions about accessibility for this program, please email hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
Image credit: (Left) Portrait of the artists. Photo: Alfredo J. Martiz J. (Right) Stills from Tropical Zincphony, 2013. Courtesy of the artists.
